


Breathless

by thanksforthecrumb



Series: Frarytales [1]
Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, in which frary is insanely fluffy and bastradamus is (finally) a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thanksforthecrumb/pseuds/thanksforthecrumb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis comes home late on a Friday night after a long week of late nights and finds Mary waiting up for him. A modern AU where Frary is really cute and fluffy and makes me happy. Incredibly happy. Welcome to Fraryland, aka my Happy Place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathless

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a crapload of head canons in this/my universe. The few you need to know for this fic are:  
> Francis (18) is a mechanic, has a big vinyl collection, loves classic rock (mostly Elton John, ELO, Queen, etc.), and is an adorable loser.  
> Mary (19) is a barista at a hipster cafe called La Maison that she pretends she hates but secretly loves and likes really hipster bands that no one else has heard of bc they're so hipster  
> Bash (20) is a bi art student and basically a less cool John Lennon (i. e. likes art but very unmotivated in school and is witty and sarcastic and awesome)  
> Nostradamus (21) is [gaaaaaaay] a medical student who is, at the moment, in Africa (he and Bash are dating bc Bastradamus=life) Also, he's called Dom in this world.  
> And they're all incredibly hipster. Like, it hurts. And Bash, Francis, and Mary are all broke and live together in an apartment in New York. Woot.

The scrape of a key being inserted into the lock echoed through the still, dark apartment. Francis’s shadowed form slid through the crack in the door. His head was down, his breathing heavy and slow. He raised his head to check the room, his eyes landing on a sitting, waiting Mary. In the dim light, Mary saw his eyebrows lift slightly in surprise. “Oh! Hey,” he said tiredly.

Mary removed a hand from its position wrapped around a coffee mug and waved. She smiled faintly. “Hey.”

He rubbed his eyes. “You shouldn’t have waited for me. I told—”

“I did anyway.”

Francis smiled blearily. The tiny quirk of his lips didn’t reach his eyes, even as he moved forward to embrace her. Mary rested her chin over his shoulder, squeezing him close. “You smell like metal,” she breathed into his curly hair.

He pulled away. “Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m going to take a shower.” He trudged off toward the bathroom.

“Hey. Wait,” Mary called softly after him.

He took his time turning to look at her, slowly pivoting. “I hardly saw you today,” Mary pointed out.

Francis looked at her with hopeless eyes. “Yeah. Sorry.” He ran fingers through his hair, closing his eyes. “Just…late nights.”

“It sounds like a lot of idiots have been crashing their cars.”

Francis laughed breathily. Mary could tell his heart wasn’t in it; this unsure laugh was purely for her benefit. “Yeah.” He jerked a thumb to the bathroom. “I’m just…”

“Yeah,” Mary mumbled. “Yeah.”

He returned to his slow plodding, hands shoved deep into his pockets, head down, loud sighs of breath ringing around the apartment. Mary could see the thin crack of light filtering through the gap in the doorframe, hear the water begin to rain down. She was tempted to open the door, open the curtains. She wanted to smile and kiss his wet face as warm water peppered their bodies. She smiled as her breath hitched as she pictured Francis’s lean, wet body, and leaned into the back of the couch. Not today.

It was awhile before a substantially cleaner, wetter Francis emerged from the bathroom. His blond hair was still dark with water, his face and arms slightly red and splotchy from where he’d wiped himself off with a towel.

“Pat. Don’t rub,” Mary reminded him.

He looked around wildly, as if he’d forgotten she was there. His eyes found hers and he inclined his head. “What?”

“I always tell you not to rub when you dry yourself. You ruin your skin, you know.”

The hot shower seemed to have restored a tiny bit of his usual perkiness. He mustered up enough energy for an eye roll. “Sorry,” he said a bit sassily. “I forgot.”

“Yeah.”

He turned away, then back to her. “Hey—are you going to stay up? I’m—I think I’m going to go to bed.”

She pulled herself up to sit on her knees and reached an arm out over the couch. He took her hand absentmindedly. “Don’t.”

“Oh, come on, Mary. I’m—”

“It’s still early.”

He flashed his head down to look at his wrist, surprised when he found his watch wasn’t there. He glanced at the clock mounted on the wall. “It’s nearly twelve thirty.”

“Yeah. It’s a Friday,” Mary said, pulling him closer. He balked, trying to pull away at first.

“I’m really—”

“We’re not going to do much. I promise. I just want to sit here with you.”

He eyed her suspiciously, like he wasn’t sure he believed her. As if she wanted to do anything but sit here. Alone. With him. She handed him her cup of coffee—by now lukewarm at best—as a peace offering. He took it and sniffed it first. He looked back at her. “What—”

“City Roast,” she answered before the words left his mouth.

He frowned. “I prefer French Roast.”

She plucked the mug out of his hand neatly. “Well, maybe if you come home at a decent hour, next time you can choose the coffee.”

He sidled onto the couch, tucking his head into her shoulder and pressing his body against hers for warmth. She smiled and put a hand across the back of his neck, on top of his curls, where her fingers played contently with the damp ringlets. He leaned further into her.

She stopped breathing.

God. They’d been together for long enough; was she ever going to stop going all breathless? They weren’t even _doing_ anything, for God’s sake. They were just _sitting_ there. He was probably sleeping.

She still didn’t breathe.

Was it okay to breathe? She didn’t want to disturb him. And anyway, it was so nice, just sitting with him quietly. There were no words, no sounds. Just him. Just her.

She felt him stir and she held her breath, biting her lip. Had she woken him up? His eyes were still a bit glazed from exhaustion, but they had a bit of their usual twinkle. “You can move, you know,” he told her with a grin parting his lips.

She breathed out deeply and he laughed. His eyebrows lifted, forcing his eyes to wake up. “Have you been holding your breath this whole time?”

“Not intentionally.”

He laughed again, and she beamed. He left the couch abruptly, leaving her right side incredibly cold and her wishing he hadn’t left her side. 

He held out his hands, waiting for her to take them. She did after she set down her coffee cup. He hauled her up, groaning a little more than was necessary. “What’re you doing?” she asked him, smiling.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in a long time. Come on, come on.” He flapped his hands impatiently. “Let me look at you.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I’m not getting naked in the middle of the apartment.”

“No!” Francis paused. “Although…I wouldn’t _disagree_ …”

She thwacked his arm.

“I mean, I want to _look_ at you. And I want you to…I don’t know, maybe look at me.” He stood in front of her and she felt his eyes run up and down her body, leaving little rushes in their wake. It wasn’t dirty, or awkward, or even sexy. He stared at her face intensely, and she didn’t know what else to do but stare back.

After a minute or two, he crossed the room. Her eyes followed after him desperately. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I want to watch a movie with you,” he said, “but there’s no way I’m going to make it through the whole thing.”

“And?”

“Well, I figured if we put on some music, it’d wake me up.” Francis walked over to his record player and stacks of vinyl records. He fingered through them delicately, pausing at a Queen album.

Mary walked up behind him and put a gently restricting hand on his. “Yeah, and it’d probably wake the whole apartment up.”

Francis waved a dismissive hand. “Bash isn’t sleeping. He’s probably Skyping Dom. Or watching porn. Who knows.”

Mary gave him a half-exasperated and half-amused look. “All right, but if we’re going to play music, we’re going to play _good_ music.”

Francis’s mouth opened as he held up a vinyl. “Exc _use_ me, but _Discovery_ is a _great_ album. And ELO is basically the best band ever to exist. I mean, besides Queen…and everyone else.”

“Francis, I really don’t need to go to bed with an earful of you singing ‘Don’t Bring Me Down.’”

He shrugged a bit sheepishly and tucked the album back into its sleeve. “Fair point.” He tapped his head. “Except now, I think…yup…yeah. ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ is _definitely_ stuck in my head.”

Mary groaned. Francis had already shut his eyes and was gleefully singing (if it could even be called singing. Honestly, the boy sounded as though he’d gargled with a spoon) the opening notes of “Don’t Bring Me Down,” as promised. 

“Francis, just give me a chance to get to my iPod. _Honestly_ ,” Mary sighed. She fished it out of her back pocket and began flipping through songs. The upbeat guitar and enthusiastic tambourine resounded through the apartment. Francis cast one last mournful look at his vinyl collection before his foot began tapping vigorously along to the strong beat.

“What is this?” he asked, quickly losing his body to the pull of the energetic music.

“Twin Forks. ‘Back to You,’” Mary answered somewhat smugly. She nearly snorted at the way Francis was moving his body. Was he dancing? Or had he just lost control of his body to some kind of seizure?

“Come on!” Francis yelled over the scratchy vocals. He held out his hands, never stilling his body. “Come on! Dance with me!”

She shook her head at first. No way was she going to make a fool of herself, even if it was just in the middle of her apartment, in the middle of the night. But he kept flashing those beautiful hands out to her, shouting and whooping along to the music, bouncing up and down. Up and down. She wondered if he knew how disgustingly cute he was when he bounced; his whole head shook and those golden curls went flying, his face screwed up in delight. 

She rolled her eyes and took his hands.

He smiled in victory, and she let out a tiny smirk. It wasn’t that long of a song, but when you were spinning around and jumping and whooping, it tired you out quickly. Especially when the two had both had long, tiresome days. They replayed the song over and over, well past the time when Francis, who’d never heard the song before, had memorized all the lyrics and was shout-singing them at the top of his lungs. Not that there were many words to remember. It was mostly the same thing over and over again.

“ _Follow the siiiiiiigns, right back to you, back to you…_ ”

He went on and on and on, singing and grinning and jumping and laughing. Their voices were completely wasted by the time they collapsed, tremendously breathless and giggling drunkenly, on the floor. Mary’s hair was tangled and messy, splayed across the floor as Francis twisted his finger around the strands. “I don’t need any signs. Know why? ‘Cause I’m already here,” he breathed into her hair.

Mary felt her cheeks redden and she broke into a huge beam. “Me too.”

They lay on the floor, completely breathless, incredibly tired, amazingly awake. Their breathing was quick and labored and punctuated with peals of giggles and laughing fits, which usually escalated into tickle fights. But soon their breathing slowed into a steady rhythm, their chests rising and falling peacefully. Their hands were locked together, their eyelids closed. For once, neither was breathless. 

The apartment was still. It seemed to have settled down as soon as the majority of its inhabitants had. Everything was peaceful, everything quiet. The gentle catches of their breath and occasional light snore from Francis wrote a different song, not upbeat and knee-jigging, but beautiful and serene and content. Not the least bit breathless.


End file.
